05/14/2026
When patient care is the top priority, hospital systems must remain continuously operational, and many hospitals rely on legacy devices; vulnerability remediation becomes difficult to keep up with, leaving systems exposed to cyberattacks.
Georgia Tech expert Brendan Saltaformaggio and his team of researchers have partnered with three Georgia hospitals to better understand healthcare cybersecurity gaps and develop tools to quickly identify and remediate system vulnerabilities.
However, testing directly on live hospital networks could put critical systems — and patient care — at risk. To address this challenge, Saltaformaggio, an associate professor in the OMS Cybersecurity program, and the Hospital-Integrated Vulnerability Identification and Proactive Remediation (H‑VIPER) team have dedicated the first phase of this estimated three-year project to building a “sandbox" or full hospital network simulation. This environment allows researchers to explore vulnerabilities and test solutions without disrupting clinical operations.
This federally funded project aims to uncover new approaches to vulnerability management that can ultimately be deployed in real hospital networks — without interfering with patient care.
Learn more about Saltaformaggio’s research: https://www.techtarget.com/healthtechsecurity/feature/Georgia-Tech-builds-network-sandbox-to-test-hospital-cyber-defenses
